A funny thing happened to my parliamentary evidence…

Aug 27, 2009 FOI in Parliament, Freedom of Information

Readers may recall that on 30th June 2009 I gave evidence to the Committee on Standards in Public Life as part of their inquiry into MPs’ allowances. I gave oral evidence and also submitted an opening statement. I posted this statement on my blog (read it here) and the Committee posted it on their website along with transcripts from the public hearings. The committee’s website states: “The Committee publishes all evidence”.

Well that’s not entirely true. As of yesterday, my submission went missing and I received the following email:

Dear Ms Brooke

Our lawyers have advised us not publish your submission due to the following reason:

“it contains statements about named individuals which are potentially defamatory.”

We are currently seeking their clarification and requesting suitable redaction.

Once we have this, I will forward them to you for your authority, in writing, to the redaction. We will then be able to publish your submission.

Anju Still
Business Manager
Committee on Standards in Public Life

You can read my statement yourself and decide. There’s very little about named politicians and what there is has already been published elsewhere. But more to the point – what sort of public inquiry is it where those giving evidence can’t speak freely and have to worry about being clobbered by the world’s worst libel law? I don’t think the take-down of my statement is necessarily the fault of the Committee and to be fair, lawyers are always risk averse. What is a disgrace is that it should even be a risk to publish evidence given to a committee set up to investigate parliament. There’s also the shameless double standard: That MPs and those giving evidence to MPs are protected from libel by parliamentary privilege, yet those giving evidence to a public inquiry investigating MPs have no such protection. A pretty scandalous state of affairs for a so-called democracy.

It would be very funny indeed if I were to receive a libel writ from an MP for my evidence given to a public inquiry investigating MPs.